


day to day, week to week

by teateatea



Category: A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams
Genre: Gen, Street Vendor - Freeform, a little reflective and a little ambigious, outsider pov, tw mention of domestic abuse as per Stanley and Stella’s relationship, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 13:41:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17163011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teateatea/pseuds/teateatea
Summary: A few minutes later, a woman appears. That in itself would be no matter, but she seems very apart from the neighbourhood that surrounds her, as if trying to operate on a different wavelength than this rundown city and it’s lazed pulse. She elicits curiosity because of the way she’s dressed, all fancy and expensive, and she looks high class. Aristocratic is a word that springs to mind.-In which the same events take place, but are recorded through how they touch the life of a street vendor.





	day to day, week to week

**Author's Note:**

> if you’re unfamiliar with the storyline of A Streetcar Named Desire, this story may be a little more ambiguous for you, as the street vendor is quite unaware of the specifics of events in the story, and what exactly is going on. It’s still readable but vague on what the actual details of what’s happening.
> 
> as mentioned in the tags, there is a mention of domestic abuse. I wouldn’t say that it’s graphic or explicit but it is mentioned so if that upsets you, just know that it is there.
> 
> also, I haven’t seen the movie and this was just the sort of setting I imagined when I read the play.

It’s a warmish sort of day when he first sees the new arrival. Eunice and the usual crowd are standing there, chatting in the street and as always, he’s working. “Red hot!” He calls out. Nobody takes interest but he’s used to it. He knows by now his job involves waiting and persistence, long hours of standing out in thick rising heat for hours on end and most of all, a strange amount of watching. 

Two men in work shirts saunter up to an apartment, loud and unapologetic about the space they take up. Tell me we can’t, their manner seems to say. They walk with the assumption they are allowed, that they are accepted, that they are entitled, that they are the owners of their worlds. 

He knows these types, and after some time on this street, he recognises them specifically. One of them hollers at a girl standing at the top of the stairs to the apartment, before tossing a package at her. She speaks in a mild mannered tone before having to stop and hastily catch it, surprised. As her surprise turns to laugher, they’ve already turned and began to walk away. They yell a few more words with their backs turned, and then she’s off to watch them bowl, tracing their path alone. He knows of the couple, hears them sometimes but never pays particular attention.

He has a job to do after all.

A few minutes later, a woman appears. That in itself would be no matter, but she seems very apart from the neighbourhood that surrounds her, as if trying to operate on a different wavelength than this rundown city and it’s lazed pulse. She elicits curiosity because of the way she’s dressed, all fancy and expensive, and she looks high class. Aristocratic is a word that springs to mind. He thinks a storyteller would emphasis that word if they described her, it’s all in her high class clothing. Or what looks like it. Aristocratic. 

Her manner is awkward, and her movements stilted and jerky. It’s clear she feels frighteningly out of place, from the way she looks around and asks if she’s in the right place, six thirty two, she says. Eunice sends her on her way and they ascend upwards into an apartment. He would have thought she would have taken up more space, given the way she’s dressed and the way she looks at their neighbourhood but instead she turns in on herself.

It would be interesting to understand why she’s here, what she could possibly be doing here, of all the ratty neighbourhoods but he goes back to his work. He needs the money. Jazz music drifts down the street.

“Red hot!” He calls.

He’s learned to take things day by day.

-

Things are quiet after that, for a little while. He doesn’t see much of the inhabitants of six thirty two but catches glimpses of them throughout the days. Occasionally he hears noises from inside the apartment, low undertones of chat. The wife comes in and out the house for chores, the husband for work, the new girl takes place in the background (he doesn’t see her as much). They droop to the back of his mind and he almost forgets about them, focused on making enough to get by, focused on his family.

-

He hears things. More than anyone would imagine. As a vendor, people tend to pass over him, forget he’s there, apart from when he’s yelling in advertisement. He doesn’t exist to them, not as a real person. He’s empty space, but he’s not. So he often becomes privy to events, privy to people totally unaware of him. The ins and outs of the neighbourhood, and the kind of people that live there. In, and out. The pieces fall into place.

From the house with the new woman, he hears the poker nights, sees the smoke waft out the window and the men and their loud voices. Hears when the commotion carries on, and then suddenly, a smack of a hand against flesh. The voices spike after, men and women alike yelling. He stares up at the dark blue sky, searches out the stars, listens to the people carry on as if this hasn’t happened countless times before, as if it won’t happen countless times in the future. He knows the routine, how it all goes. And they follow it, just like clockwork.

The once laughing girl is crying now, ushered out the door by fierce Eunice out the apartment and upstairs. He waits, of course he does, and it all dies down. The man comes out, yelling her name and causing dramatics, and she falls back into his arms, because she always does, because he acts like he didn’t mean to, because he was drunk, because he promises he’ll do better, because they love each other, because everyone has faults, because where else does she have to go? Because what other option does she have?

Because she has a child. Because it’s good sex.

[you can’t beat a woman an’ then call ‘her back! Eunice had yelled at man.]

The new woman, the sister, sits out on the street, looking as if she’s being held together by paper clips, looking stricken and desperate and turning this way and that. She is joined shortly by one of the poker friends. He hears snippets of their conversation, reassurances of there’s nothing to be scared of, it’s a shame but don’t take it serious, they’re crazy about each other. He packs up and starts to walk home. He can stay out longer tomorrow. He doesn’t want to listen to this anymore, no matter how many times he’s already heard it.

-

The next night, he catches a glance of the sister in a doorway, chatting at a young man. It’s dark, or at least it’s hurling towards it, light gently there but fading and he can just make out their figures. He can hear their voices too, but he’s far enough away that what they’re saying is inaudible. After a few sentences, she hovers closer to him and then kisses him, quick and light. The boy stumbles away, confused and unsure, even as she blows him a kiss. She watches him go. As soon as he leaves, or maybe a moment after, the man from poker appears from around the corner. He holds roses, red curling things with elegant stems, tentative but steady.

It’s the man who had sat out on the street with her the night before, the one who had been at the poker night.

They leave together.

He wonders where it’s going, how it will end.

-

At some point, maybe since the beginning, things have grown strained, the air tight and the laughs from the house forced, if they come at all. Through the window at one point, he catches a glance of a birthday cake. The tension is growing and the people in the street seem more worked up than ever. The husband is is more bulking and forceful than ever, his tones frequently mocking and his anger continually forthcoming. 

He storms from place to place, acts out his emotion wholeheartedly for everyone to see, for them to listen to him, for him to be important. He takes his emotion, and refuses to be responsible for it, casts it out and pushes it onto others. He sneers and condescends, and holds his self righteousness on every layer of his skin as he argues with his wife, as he makes snide comments towards the girl.

The girl herself is more uneasy than ever, more shifty and even more full of fake cheerful tones. She leaves the house only after dark, and when she opens her mouth strange full fabrications come out. She plays an act in front of the others, lies and presents herself, rather than is herself. And he knows because he sees her when she doesn’t think anyone is seeing, invisible as he is. 

The atmosphere between her and the husband grows stiffer, and he hears the water running more and more often, (quiet her nerves, as they say) and the wife desperately tries to keep it together, cycling between empathy for others and anger at her husband and her role as a wife and her role as a sister and her role as, as what?

Eunice and her husband are fighting again, he thinks dully.

-

He sees the husband talking to a man, a man who calls himself an informant.

-

The tension that seems to be hanging in the air comes to a climax a few days later. The girl, no, Blanche hurries down the street. Blanche is the name he has heard spoken. 

The first time he hears the words, it takes him a second to process and understand. And then he feels pity, and a sense of shock maybe, but he’s getting too old, his hands too weathered, to be surprised when he realises at the cruelty of what has passed. She doesn’t seem to care who hears her, with hysterical state she’s in, but maybe she has become too familiar with not being listened to. Maybe she doesn’t think it would matter who hears. Maybe she’s wrapped up in it all to care.

Seeing her stumbling along feels as if it’s been dragged out, slowed down in his memory, but the next second, he blinks and she’s gone. The words linger behind for much longer. [not clean enough to bring in the house with my mother.]

Its a long time before he can get those words out of his head.

For a few short days, it’s curiously silent and still, and he wishes, hopes, maybe against his better judgement, things have settled down. Things are fine. Then he hears a scream, and sobbing and he knows,

He’s wrong.

-

In the days that follow, he can’t help thinking about how different things seem now, inexplicably. Where’s before there was tension (and while he wouldn’t say anything feels calm) there’s a finality that hangs around now, a stillness filled with all the unfair things hanging in the air. Maybe he’s imagining it.

-

He sees her for the last time shortly after. He sees her being guided out the house by two official looking people, cold, delusional. Dried tears reside on her cheeks, something vacant in her eyes even as she tries to talk about her reality, her man on the other side of the telephone line. Her Shep Huntleigh.

As they pull her along, she looks at him for a moment, a startling moment of contact and then her gaze drifts away. Did she even see him, or is she so far gone he’s just another part of the scenery? He feels a pang of sorrow in his chest. He doesn’t know with all certainty what goes down in that house, but he has an idea. He‘s seen the man that lives there, and he’s familiar with the type. He’s familiar with the sort of things that can happen.

The details are lost on him, but he doesn’t doubt it’s tragedy.

But he does know is this: a girl came to that house a few months ago, and something has happened. Something terrible has happened, maybe terrible things instead of a terrible thing, maybe a life of them and now she’s forever changed. He watches as they drag her into the car. A life, gone. He can hear crying from inside the house, and from the sounds there seems to be many wildly different emotions at play here.

In the days that pass afterwards, the wife is distant and distressed. She pauses in places where she didn’t before, looks out windows for a second and looks trapped, holds a child now. She pushes her lack of comfort down and tries to believe the lie her husband told her. The lies.

But he can’t do this, can’t dwell on the people he can’t help. Could he have helped? What could he have done? The question will linger in his mind for far longer than he would like, but for now he pushes it from his head, plasters on a smile and shivers only a little when the car drives off. 

“Red hot!” He calls. Life has got to go on. 

He’s just the street vendor, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> If you read this story and have thoughts on what I’ve written, please feel free to leave a comment!


End file.
